Routemaster much loved Double Decker bus may never be built

Wasn't one of Boris Johnson's campaign pledges to bring back the Routemaster as the bendy bus was evil? Wonder how many people voted for Boris because of that?


Who knows? What we do know is the following:

"The Mayor's plans for a newgeneration Routemaster may not happen, his new transport boss admitted today.

Kulveer Ranger, Boris Johnson's director of transport policy, said that a design competition would be launched - but if no bid was good enough they would look again at the pledge.

He added that although Mr Johnson is very keen to bring in a new-style bus in place of bendy buses, they would not press ahead with the idea for the sake of it.

Mr Johnson made phasing out bendy buses a priority, initially saying new Routemasters would cost £8million to run with conductors. However, he later admitted the figure would be nearer £100million." said The Evening Standard

The report continues: "In a visit last week, mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg also warned Mr Johnson to get rid of any manifesto pledges immediately which looked unlikely to work."

The Tory Troll Blog says "But only one week into his tenure it is clear that Boris must have known full well that this pledge was as dodgy as its costings, well before the capital went to the polls."

Boris Watch says "How many times during the campaign did we have to listen to Boris lecturing us on how Ken had once said "only some sort of ghastly, dehumanised moron would get rid of the Routemaster", then done so himself; and how Boris Johnson, knight in shining armour, would be riding to the rescue with a new generation Routemaster to save us all from the moron’s work? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I know it was a lot.

But just how much of a ghastly, dehumanised moron would you have to be to spend nine months telling people that if you become Mayor you will bring back an open-backed, conductor-managed "twenty-first-century Routemaster", flying in the face of expert advice and analysis of costings and practicalities, touting this as your flagship policy for months on end… only to have your transport adviser reveal, within your first fortnight in office, that chances are no such thing will ever happen at all?"